The Donegal-Dublin game in the All-Ireland quarter-final group phase will go ahead at Croke Park, the GAA have announced.
Donegal had objected to the fact that Dublin will play two of their ‘Super 8’ games in Croke Park.
Their meeting with Donegal was pencilled in as a Croke Park game, as it is a fixture between two provincial Championship winners. However, Donegal have contended that Dublin get an unfair advantage as they also play at Croke Park against the winner of the Roscommon-Armagh qualifier.
Dublin have played all of their Championship games since 2004 at Croke Park and haven’t played a League game outside GAA headquarters since 2010.
Leading Donegal officials met with the GAA’s top brass at Croke Park this morning.
“It was accepted as part of these discussions, that the rules in relation to the new All-Ireland SFC quarter-final round robin system had been democratically adopted at Congress 2017 and that these provided for all Round 1 games to be played at Croke Park and each county to subsequently have one home and one away game,” a joint statement read with Donegal and Dublin to clash on Saturday-week, July 14, at 7pm.
“While Donegal challenged how any team could nominate Croke Park as their home venue, it was acknowledged that there was nothing in Rule to prohibit this.
“Donegal also requested in light of the issues they highlighted, that a review of the first year of the new Championship structures be held by Central Council later in the year and that all counties be invited to submit their observations in this context.
“It was agreed that the issues highlighted by Donegal would be considered as part of this process and that if Central Council collectively felt that non-structural changes to aspects of the Championship were required, that these could be put to Annual Congress in 2019 for consideration.”
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